One day, two parties, many babies

There were a lot of babies today.  I went to a 30th this morning and quite a few people there had babies or young kids.  One girl, who is more of an "acquaintance" asked me if I wanted to hold her baby.  We weren't even talking at the time so it was a bit strange.  I surprised myself with how quickly I said "no".  I've never felt that comfortable with this girl, plus I'm not in the habit of holding other people's babies unless I know them very well.  Because of my disability I get nervous with newborns and think they won't feel comfortable, since I can't relax my left arm properly.  (I've never dropped one, though).  DH, on the other hand, is quite happy to hold other people's newborns (and looks comfortable holding them).  I found out later that the girl thought she had upset me, which I feel a bit bad about.  I can understand it would be difficult to know the "right" thing to say to someone in my situation when you have a new baby.

Then I went to my friends' "le'Chaim" for their twin girls.  I had warned my friend, R, I might not be able to stay long.  She went through 4 cycles of IVF to have them so she understands the emotions involved.  In the end it was more just the fact that there were so many people and I was getting claustrophobic that made me tell DH it was time to leave.  We still managed to stay over an hour.  I'm wondering if the day took more out of me than I thought it had though, as I was falling asleep in the car at 5 pm.

I thought I'd got a positive OPK on Friday but I got an even stronger one last night.  Unfortunately, DH lost his wallet last night, which put him in a foul mood.  Of all the days for that to happen.  I could see this month's baby chances going down the drain (metaphorically speaking ;) ).  He was still in a bad mood this morning.  Here we go again, I thought.  Another month of me having to guilt trip him into BD'ing.  My stomach churned at the thought.  Then I thought, why not take the guilt out of it for a change and stick to simple facts.  I said to him, "Can I put something to you?"  When he said yes, I said, "In a couple of weeks this stuff with your wallet and cards will be sorted out, but we'll have missed our chance."  And I left it at that.  And it worked.  I just hope we don't have to keep doing this every month for much longer...

Please excuse the break in transmission

Can't believe there have been almost 2 months since my last post.  Whoops!  But I have some excuse.  We moved into our own home (yay) and between the commotion and not having an internet connection for several weeks (and work being pretty full on) the blogging has fallen by the wayside.

Unfortunately not much has happened from the TTC point of view.  Not that we haven't been trying...But my body just doesn't seem to be cooperating this time.  To make life more interesting my body has thrown me some curve balls -  my cycles have got a bit shorter, AF a bit lighter and I've started getting unpleasant symptoms in the lead-up to AF.  A few days before I've beein getting mild cramping sensations in my uterus (a bit like I had when I was pregnant, so of course I start getting my hopes up).  Then I start feeling like something is irritating my bladder mainly on the left side, so I feel like I need to pee all the time, even though there's not much there.  Then I start feeling pressure on either side of my pelvis.  Last cycle this actually lasted a couple of days into AF.  Today the bladder irritation is back and I'm only CD10!  Anyway I have booked in for another pelvic ultrasound (aka dildo-cam) on Wednesday so hopefully I'll get an answer.  At the moment I am thinking either more fibroids (since I have 'form' in that department) or endometriosis.  If it's endo, I'll probably need a laparascopy to confirm it but I'm thinking if the ultrasound doesn't reveal anything I might ask for a lap anyway.  I'm way past messing around and 'seeing how I go'.  I'm way past being patient.

Emotionally it's been (and still is) a very hard time.  I knew it would be...Everyone seems to be having, or be about to have, babies.  And I'm really happy for them, and doing so much better than I was 6 months ago.  But I'm sick of feeling bad and then feeling guilty about feeling bad for the same reason over and over again.  I'm actually starting to bore MYSELF!

Last night we were supposed to babysit my nephew while my sister and brother-in-law went to the musical, "Rock of Ages".  Well my nephew got sick so we ended up taking the tickets.  The show was great - I really enjoyed it, as did Joe.  But at the end of the night I thought, I'd rather be home with a baby.  My question is: is this my life now?  Am I not going to experience unmitigated enjoyment of what I have because of what I don't have?

I sometimes wish I'd been unable to conceive...at least then we would have people monitoring the whole process and I wouldn't feel quite as much like the past 2 1/2 years (almost) had been a waste of time.  The fact is that I'm just as childless as someone who hadn't been able to conceive for 2 1/2 years, but they would have been getting more intensive help by now.  I'm probably completely misguided and I'm not trying to minimise the difficulties involved in fertility meds, IUI and IVF...I just feel like I'm floundering.  I always say to myself, "you have to be an advocate for yourself" so I'm thinking that the next step after another ultrasound and a lap is to ask for a monitored cycle.  At least that will feel like doing something...